


"What They Needed"

by Allronix



Series: Endgame Scenario [13]
Category: Tron (1982), Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 02:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allronix/pseuds/Allronix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, long ago, he reached out and pulled her back from nothing. But after a thousand cycles of pain. can the favor be returned?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red

  
**Title:** "What They Needed"

**Author:** Allronix

**Rating:** PG

**Pairing:** Tron/Yori

**Disclaimer:** I am not, nor do I represent, the Almighty Mouse.

 

 

* * *

  
**Part One - Red**   


  
  


  
_He is confused._   
_He is lost._   
_He is broken._   
_He is a traitor._   
_He is **imperfect.**_

 

 

When he saw Flynn again, it was like a power surge had traveled between them, and in those prolonged micro-cycles, he remembered everything. The pair of disks on his back burned, fighting with one another for control. There was no time to process, only to act.

 

He threw himself at Clu in a suicidal charge. Like before, it did little other than slow the wicked Program down, but it bought those precious nano-cycles. Clu pitched him off the light-jet and into the sea. After that was coldness and pain. Clu had a low-level synch with him at all times. Some of it was a leash to control him. Some of it was a way to derive pleasure from the kills, but Clu was...inventive...as always when to came to ways to exploit it. Through that link, he felt Clu's last gasp of anger and frustration before the shockwave hit, and he felt nothing more.

  


He had betrayed the Users. He had betrayed Clu. He failed in both directives. His memories were glitched, his code a mess.

  


* * *

 

  


" _Don't look at me like that," Clu said, the cocky grin never leaving his face, spinning an identity disk on his fingers. "You're an old Program...archaic. Imperfect, but don't worry. I've got big plans for you."_

  


_He jerked against his bonds, but they wouldn't give. Pixels leaked from the many wounds covering his body, especially the jagged gash crossing his chest. Any other Program would have de-rezzed long before this. "Delete yourself, Clu! I didn't bow before Master Control, and I'll de-rez before I bow before **you**."_

  


_Clu chuckled at that, that low and gravely voice that was too much like Flynn's for anyone's liking. "You say that like I'm giving you a choice. Besides, no one knows you're here. The walls have a mute function. Scream all you want, and no one will hear you."_

  


_He narrowed his eyes. "You claimed to serve the Users, as I did. You claimed you would protect this system..."_

  


" _No, my programming is to make the_ _ **perfect**_ _system. And there is nothing more imperfect than a User." Clu leaned in. "Think about it. Does Alan-1 even know you're_ _ **here**_ _?"_

  


_He couldn't control the involuntary shiver that went through him, the momentary flicker of his circuitry lines. "Of course. Flynn would have told him."_

  


_Clu laughed. "Flynn did no such thing. **Alan Bradley** has forgotten all about you. You're alone, Program. There's no User to save you...just me." The identity disk made another couple spins atop Clu's outstretched finger. "Don't worry, though. I'm going to re-make you. You'll forget him. You'll even forget Flynn." Clu leaned in and whispered in his ear. "You'll forget everything except me."_

  


_The second disk snapped into place over his own, and the burning began._

  


* * *

 

  


Rinzler considered himself to be merely an extension of Clu's will. Clu was perfection, and all Programs would accept that or de-resolution. There was always a part of him that was trapped deep within, watching with horror and unable to stop himself from carrying out Clu's orders. Clu could silence that part, make him "perfect."

 

_Wide blue eyes...men, women, and small Isos that had not come from the sea, but were something Flynn called "born." There was one of the smaller ones...male...scooting away on the floor away from the decaying forms of his progenitors, looking up with fear and grabbing a broken piece of masonry to try and throw. The Iso never got the chance as the first disk severed the child's arm and the second split his chest..._

  


 

Worst of all, it wasn't just executing Clu's political enemies with targeted assassinations. He killed for entertainment, for the pacification of the loyal subjects of Clu's regime. He was their sadist, their focus, their champion...

 

_The chanting of the crowd. They had come to see slaughter and would be disappointed otherwise. The crowds did not matter, though. Clu did. And Clu wanted to see his enemies crushed. Give them a little while to fear. Give them a micro-cycle of hope, because that was how Clu liked it. And the Grid's citizens channeled their hate and fear of their fellow Programs into it. Some of them practically overloaded in the stands as he walked in. Destruction to the traitor, destruction to whatever individual impulses and rebellious urges they wished to hide from Clu's eyes. He was walking condemnation, horrible death to all enemies of perfection._

  


" _Rinzler! Rinzler! De-rez!"_

  


_It was in the games where all else was silenced, where the world narrowed to destroy or be destroyed. Here, that disobedient glitch could stay mostly silent. Here was the closest he felt to perfection._

  


 

  


It was only now, too late, that he understood the imperfection Rinzler hated, but could never truly silence. It was the voice of who he _was_ , buried beneath Clu's corruption. That identity had been offline for so long, he barely recalled his own file designation.

  


The freezing data, poisoned long ago on Clu's orders so that new _life_ could not come from it, closed over him, and all sensation was gone. He was aware of energy leeching from his body, and of gradual, numbing calm.

  


_My name is not Rinzler,_ he thought defiantly, certain it would be the final thought he would ever have. _**My designation is Tron**_ _. I guard the System. I fight for the Users._

  


If this was de-rez, then he was ready for the nothing that followed, especially if it took "Rinzler" with him.

 


	2. Indigo

 

Yori's outpost was the abandoned I/O tower at the edge of the Simulation Sea. The roof caved in where the beam once shone, rubble strewn across what was once beautiful grounds. It was not always abandoned, nor was it always in such disrepair. It was once the first building in the Grid. When this was a free system, she manned the gates, welcoming their transfer from the old ENCOM system or their creation as new Programs.

 

It had been beautiful once, the shining tower with a bright beacon casting its glow over the pristine sea, surrounded by intricately programmed gardens of artificial life Flynn brought to the Grid; pyreflies with their tiny, dancing light, green-lined constructs Flynn likened to "plants" and "flowers." Tiny applications and the odd Bit would make visitors laugh or leap into their laps for a scratch on the head or drink of energy. The centerpiece was a small power spring and a wall where symbolic disks could be drawn, a memorial to those who had gone to the void. It was a place for reflection and rest, for laughter and remembrance.

 

Now, only the small power spring remained as one of the only things she managed to purify. The sea itself remained poisoned and dead. The "flowers and plants" were de-rezzed and Yori hadn't figured out how to restore them. Even the memorial wall was crumbling into disuse as the dead were too many and it was easier for most to never look back at those lost and not to look to a future that only seemed to grow dimmer. She was a relic in a relic, and the situation would be comic if it weren't also so painful.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Yori barely had time to look at her new form on this Grid. Her suit was dark colored, and while she had a less elaborate design on her circuit lines, the triangle at her throat was still there, lit up with a rich indigo. Over the top of her suit, she wore robes that reminded her of Dumont's, only less cumbersome._

 

_The transport left her disoriented for a few nanoseconds. Finally, she saw two figures – Flynn and Tron - in similar gridsuits, lit in blue-white._

 

_Flynn was all wide grins and bright ideas. "Isn't it great?"_

 

" _There's nothing here," Tron said with a scowl. He was always a quite literal Program, and she couldn't fault him for it._

 

" _Of course there's nothing here! That's what's so great about it. Guys, we're going to build this ourselves. Ground-up...Well, from the sea up. The Simulation Sea's got all the raw material. We just have to use what's there to construct the rest." Flynn elbowed Yori in the side, jolting a sensitive circuit line_. _"Hey, wanna help me build the I/O Tower?"_

 

" _Me?" Yori looked at Flynn like he'd grown a second head. User or not, he certainly had strange ideas._

 

" _Sure! You run simulations all the time. C'mon. Picture the perfect I/O Tower. Anything you want. Besides, it'll be all yours. You run the laser program, so we've at least got to get you a base of operations."_

 

_She pictured it, calculating the resources it would need. As she pictured it in her mind, she felt Flynn next to her, hands on her shoulders as he shaped the code and pulled what was needed from the virtual sea._

 

" _That's it. Keep your focus. Almost got it."_

 

_Equations and vectors danced in the air, shaping the first building on the Grid. In the end, an ivory-colored building with neon blue lines seemed to shimmer into existence like a mirage. It was vaguely conical at the base with several tall and flat spires jutting out to encircle it. The I/O beam itself, a brilliant blue-violet like the lines on her suit, shot out from that center, lighting the whole Grid._

 

" _Compile, run, and save!" Flynn said with a laugh. "Now as far as travel terminals go, it beats the hell out of LAX."_

 

" _LAX?" Yori asked._

 

" _Airports are designed by sadists on my side of the screen," Flynn quipped before starting to race over and inspect the handiwork._

 

" _Unbelievable," Tron muttered, though Yori wasn't sure if he was referencing Flynn's behavior or craftsmanship._

 

* * *

  
  


She had stood on the balcony overlooking the sea when the new creatures – neither fully Program or User - rose from the sea. She saw the giddiness on Flynn's face and the disgust on Clu's. She didn't know what to make of the Isos, frankly. She welcomed them as part of the Grid, but also feared them. Programs like her always dreaded the prospect of obsolescence, as the need to be useful to their Users was the reason for their existence. Her purpose was to man the tower as Dumont had on the ENCOM network, and to run the laser that allowed Flynn access between the worlds. She remembered him, cocky grin and careless demeanor as he would come in, and the same good cheer as he left.

 

" _Thanks, Yori," he would say. "Take care of Tron for me. Try not to work too hard!"_

 

Back then, he never failed to get her to smile back as he stood in the I/O beam and vanished until the next visit, brimming with ideas she'd be happy to help him implement.

 

Flynn did not see the Grid grow darker. He did not see Clu succumbing to those small acts of cruelty. She didn't witness most of them, but Tron did. A malicious joke here, a bitter comment about the Isos there. It began to escalate into actions that were more questionable – a Program gone missing, an Iso denied access to an energy spring, mutters of worry from Programs that Flynn was far too infatuated with the Isos and neglecting the Programs, mutters Clu never silenced. She heard most of this from Tron as her duties at the tower kept her busy.

 

She thought Tron worried too much. That was his function, after all. Maybe if she had taken him more seriously...

 

But of course, Clu decided that he had had enough. The Isos were going to make Programs obsolete. The Isos were not perfect. His orders was to build a perfect system for all Programs. Therefore, the Isos would have to be destroyed. By that time, he had amassed followers, planted fear in the Grid, and made a coordinated attack. They bombed the tower and set the gardens afire. The System Guards stormed through the portals, and murdered her assistants before her horrified eyes. When the roof collapsed, they assumed her destroyed under the rubble.

 

She'd spent a small eternity half-way to de-rez when she woke and found herself in a shabby sanctuary on the Grid's frontiers. Flynn brought her back, just as he had aboard Sark's yacht cycles before. He told her in a cracked, broken voice about Clu's betrayal. He told her of Tron's death. (Users did not use the term de-rez like Programs did). They didn't have the luxury of grieving. Clu was waging all-out war on the Grid, on the Isos, on anything that didn't bow before his twisted idea of "perfection." Without the I/O Tower, Flynn was trapped on the Grid. The only good part was that Clu would be as well, unable to infect other systems.

 

Yori knew ways to resist, ways to mask one's presence from guards, how to illegally siphon power, how to maintain communications and pilot most vessels in the Grid. She was not a combatant like Tron was, but she took it up in his memory, keeping a lightstaff she'd wrested from a System Guard as both protection and reminder. She worked with the Resistance, smuggling Isos out of endangered parts of the Grid, participating in hit-and-run attacks and sabotage...

 

But unlike their battles against Master Control, the more they fought, the stronger Clu became. Clu thought like a User...no, Clu thought like _Flynn..._ and that made Clu a thousand times more dangerous. Every strategy the Resistance planned? Clu had a counter-strategy. For every life they saved, ten more died. And if strategy didn't work, Clu sent Rinzler – a thin shadow of black-suited, double-disk de-resolution that killed anything Clu willed. No one knew where Rinzler came from, and no one was in a position to care.

 

In the end, the Isos were destroyed, the Resistance crushed. Flynn withdrew, a broken man, into his sanctuary and never left it. Yori never forgave him.

 

* * *

 

  
" _I can't destroy him without him destroying me," he explained. "As long as I stay out of it, he won't win – not completely."_

 

" _And that's your solution? Head to the Outlands, shut yourself off, and hope Clu gets_ _ **bored**_ _?"_

 

" _I don't know what else I can do. I fight him, he grows stronger. I make Programs, he re-purposes them. He poisoned the Sea of Simulation. I can't make anything new. We're at a stalemate."_

 

" _And the Programs? The Isos?"_

 

_He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. Yori noticed it changing over the cycles, going from dark to a lighter color, not quite white. She also noticed his physical form changing, becoming more hunched, slower. She had assumed it was some corruption, and Flynn bitterly laughed it off, saying she was mostly right._

 

" _The Isos are dead, Yori. Every one of them. She...she's the last. I don't want her to know. I..." his voice choked. "I can't let her know. I've got to stay – if only to protect her."_

 

" _And the Programs? We're de-rezzing right and left out there. Clu's forces hunt us down and we're 're-purposed' into drones, or sent to the games where the crowds cheer and his favorite kill app destroys us painfully. The Isos are not the only ones hunted. Your life is not the only one at stake here! What about us, Flynn? Or has Clu been right all along, and you think of us 'Basics' as insignificant and obsolete?"_

 

_Flynn sighed and slumped over. "I don't know what to do any more. This isn't like the fight with Master Control. I can't find the flaw in Clu's strategy because he's using **my** strategy. **I can't fight him**. Do you think I want to admit this? Do you think I want to be trapped here?"_

 

" _You made him – you can unmake him."_

 

" _Maybe, at one point, but he's like Frankenstein. He's...He's..." His voice choked. "I can't fight him, Lora, I don't know how."_

 

" _Lora?" That slip of the tongue almost made her circuit lines go red._

 

" _Oh, shit. Oh...Yori, sorry. I -"_

 

" _I'm not her, and I'm not some reflection of her. I'm just a Program. And it's my_ _ **function**_ _to repair and maintain the Grid. Remove yourself from the equation, Flynn. Fine. But I only know_ _ **this**_ _world. And I'm going to find some patch of it to rebuild – with or without you! If you come out of hiding – you'll know where you can find me."_

 

_Storming out the sanctuary's silver door, Yori pulled the baton from her belt, opposite the one that generated her staff. Generating her own light-cycle, she sped away from the Outlands, away from Flynn, away from the city that was named for a dead Program and made by a User now more concerned with hiding from his monstrous creation than taking responsibility for ending it._

 

_When she could drive no more, she found herself back at the crumbling ruins of the I/O Tower, the place it all began. The sea was an inky, sludge-like void. The tower was a collapsed mess of scattered voxels. The gardens were destroyed, and the memorial wall had vast chunks blasted away._

 

_Yori marched up to the wall, and took a discarded chunk of masonry sharpened down to a polyhedral point. In a blank space on the memorial wall, she carved Tron's name and disk symbol in hex code. It was the first step in what would undoubtedly be a long process of trying to restore anything she could._

 

_As she stepped back from the wall, seeing his name listed with others that had de-rezzed, it hit her with the force of a disk blow. Tron was gone...and she was alone. Yori dropped to her knees in exhaustion, wishing it all wasn't true._

 

* * *

  
  
  


 

She didn't know what else she could do, and her directives didn't account for just lying down and de-rezzing, no matter how much she wanted to. Clu preferred live prey to scavenging, and she could only hope that would let her work in peace. Abandoned by User and Program alike, she bitterly set to her task.

 

After untold cycles of working alone, the skies above her tower lit up again. Everything happened so fast that by the time Yori armed her staff and charged out of the tower, it was over. There was a white flash, a shockwave, and then nothing.

 

And that's when she saw the lone figure on the sea's edge, circuit lines flickering between orange, blue-white, and nothing as he hovered at the edge of de-rez. Gasping, she raced over to the prone figure...

 

And stopped short when she got a look at _what_ it was. He lay, prone, arms outstretched, those accursed double disks well out of his reach.

 

Rinzler – Clu's deadly pet. Countless Program lives and double that in Isos were lost to that monster's hands. If he was abandoned like this for failing, it served him right.

 

Yori snatched the staff from her belt, extending it to its full length. Positioning it over Rinzler's chest, she was going to finish this murderer off once and for all. "Just another Program, aren't you?" she said bitterly.

 

But when she positioned her lightstaff to finish him, she saw the _very distinctive_ pattern on his chestplate.

 

"Oh, Lora-3..." she murmured. It couldn't be. It just _couldn't_ be.

 

She flicked her staff upward, de-rezzing his helmet and confirming the horrible truth.


	3. Purgatory

 

The first sensation he was aware of was that of touch. The cold of the poisoned sea was gone, and he felt this heavy, inert sensation over his entire body. Unable to move or otherwise respond, Tron half-wondered if this nothingness was the void that Programs dreaded.

 

Though he was a Program of great faith, that faith had been shaped by unfortunate fact. There was no unity or organization among Userkind, especially on the Grid; just a single, flawed User who made a world, then left a monster to govern it. There were no answers to his silent cries – only Clu's laughter and Clu's orders, and the liberties of pleasure and pain blurred into irrelevance.

 

* * *

  
  
  


_Clu had bound him to the re-purposing rack. A good performance at the games always made Clu excited and ready for a little game of his own. Rinzler was the Program all feared – and Rinzler feared Clu._

 

" _Ten Programs in row. You always were great."_

 

_The pain would come, it always did. Clu smacked the baton against his palm. Through that link, Rinzler could feel Clu's impatience and anger. "But you hesitated, Rinzler. The little compound interest Program with the big eyes. You hesitated."_

 

_The baton jabbed into the base of Rinzler's spine and the power jolt traveled across his body painfully. Rinzler tried not to scream. Clu did not like screaming._

 

" _Hesitate..." His speech processors were minimal at best, reduced to echoing words, especially the words of Clu. He did not require speech. It was an imperfection._

 

" _I tell you to make it good for the crowds. Let them cheer, let them channel their anger and hate for their fellow Programs into you. It keeps them divided, keeps them from challenging me, especially since I can't blame the Grid's decay on the Isos anymore."_

 

" _Hate..." The small, imperfect part of him spat out the word. That part hated Clu, hated the Games, hated Rinzler. That part needed to be rectified._

 

_Clu's hands were a mockery of gentle as the all-concealing helmet and gridsuit de-rezzed, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. This was necessary. Clu would not have done it if it were not. Clu was perfect and he was not._

 

_Clu's fist smashed into the side of his cheek. It always began that way. Clu would use the baton, his hands, his feet. He would rip out the twin disks and painfully re-construct Rinzler's faulty code._

 

_And when it was all over, Rinzler would collapse to the floor, leaking data from wounds not sustained in the ring, the treasonous glitches burned out of his circuits and that imperfection silenced until next time. Clu would eventually send a patch Program to undo the wounds, restoring his armor and helmet. Afterward, Clu would say nothing, and act like it never happened._

 

_He had a designation because Clu willed it. He had function because Clu willed it. He was only an extension of his masters' will from his body to his source code. And someday, he would be perfect._

 

* * *

  
  


The memory of hands on his body made Tron shudder. He did not want to awake to another session with Clu, especially not now after he had recovered some shards of his original programming. He didn't want to forget that he had been something other than Clu's favorite weapon.

 

In the silence and darkness, he waited for the void, waited for the dissolving of his code into the nothingness he deserved, never to be re-used or returned. No User could forgive him for trying to kill one of their kind and no Program would forgive him for the casual atrocities he performed as Clu's slave.

 

Instead of the nothingness he wished, he could feel the sensation of hands cupping his face and a faint trickle of power. One of those  
phantom hands stayed on his jaw while the other drifted toward his chest, tracing a long-obsolete circuit line.

 

With a gasping, whirring breath, Tron made the horrible realization that he had not de-rezzed at all. He was helpless again, unable to move, unable to fight. Other sensations followed – coldness on his lower back. He wasn't wearing his gridsuit or armor.

 

_No!_

 

Tron thought he heard something, but his audio processors weren't online, and it just sounded like so much distorted garbage. Trying to will himself to move didn't seem to work. His shoulders were slightly elevated and resting on something, but he didn't know what.

 

The hands just went to his shoulders, trying to hold him, trying to keep him pinned. He tried to struggle and fight back, but he didn't have enough power! His processes flared with terror at being completely at the mercy of this unknown captor. Exhausting what little strength he had, he went limp with a strangled whirr. The same audio, light and soft, assured him with words he could not understand...

 

But it had been so long since there were hands on him that did not involve a fight to the death or one of Clu's brutal "corrections." Tron wanted to brace himself for the inevitable pain, yet resigned himself to the knowledge he would not have the strength to do so.

 

  
  



	4. All that Is Visible

 

 

When she pulled him away from the sea's edge, she feared that he would de-rez at any moment and leave her alone again. Grieving for him once was horrible, but to grieve a second time after learning the truth?

 

She put the staff back on her belt and pulled out the baton. Capable of manifesting any one of many vehicles on the Grid, none of them would be exactly right for the purpose. Fortunately, she was designed to tweak existing objects and simulations.

 

It was almost like that first day and the I/O Tower, creating transport. She ended up with a hybrid – light-cycle cabin in front and a flat bed in the back. Quickly checking her surroundings to make sure no one else could see them, she dragged his inert body into the back of the vehicle. The last thing she wanted to do was fight off one of Clu's followers or some Program who wouldn't understand why she was trying to save "Rinzler."

 

The embittered fighter in her would have thought it best that he de-rezzed. It was more likely than not that there wasn't anything left of the Program he was after so long. He had been Rinzler longer than he'd been Tron, enemy longer than guardian. Maybe he would wake up and de-rez her for her foolishness. It would serve her right and be a fitting end to hundreds of cycles spent in forlorn effort.

 

One look at his face, relatively unscarred, but twisted with pain, destroyed that notion quickly. She lost track of how many cycles she spent grieving, how many System Guards she fought in his memory, how often she stopped caring if she lived through a mission or not because she hoped de-rez would mean that she'd see him again in the void. If their positions were reversed...

 

No, not "if" - "when." It had been a very long time since their struggle against Master Control, but she remembered those dark cycles. Master Control deemed her too "useful" to be de-rezzed, so Sark's drones drained her of life and power until she could only carry out orders mindlessly, speaking in monotone numeric code. Then _he_ came for her, reached out, and pulled her back.

 

Abandoning him was _not an option_.

 

The tower itself had a small power pool in its basement, one of the few things that still was untainted here. She got as far as she could with her vehicle, but still had to drag him an agonizingly long way down the ramp. The disturbing way he was flickering overclocked her into near-panic.

 

"Hold on just a little longer, _please_."

 

Her circuits were screaming with pain by the time they reached the edge of the pool. Yanking one of the disks from his back, she examined it and scowled at the orange coloring. Worse was all the disgusting input that she got from it.

 

One did not work as Flynn's right-hand woman for a few hundred cycles and not learn a few things about re-purposing, re-programming, and re-shaping. She saw bits of the twisted code, the overrides and hideous corruption, and barely kept herself from screaming. To use one of Flynn's words, she was _pissed._ A very tempting fantasy ran through her processors about skewering Clu on her lightstaff.

 

Tron's labored breathing snapped her out of it. He still hovered between function and de-rez as if uncertain about what path to take.

 

_Users..._

 

Ironically for a Guardian, she had long lost her faith in them – _especially_ Kevin Flynn.

 

She could do precious little to correct the incredible glitches holding together Tron's code. It was done over hundreds of cycles, torn down, rebuilt in a hurry, held together with just enough patching to keep it operational.

 

"How are you even functional at all?" she murmured in wonder.

 

Putting the disk aside for now, she tore off a piece of her ragged Guardian robes and soaked it in the pool, the indigo scrap glowing faintly. He was cut in several places, bleeding out data. She had to know just how bad the damage was. She sighed and de-rezzed his gridsuit.

 

At one time, she had known his body as well as she knew her own – every sensitive circuit line, every curve of rendered muscle. Aside from one scar of dead pixels curving the left side of his face from forehead to throat, his face had little damage, probably because the helmet was needed to maintain the illusion that the Grid's champion was de-rezzed. The rest of him was less fortunate. Like his code disk, he was covered in scarring, evidence of wounds suffered, then patched up hastily so he could be sent out on another "mission." Yori hadn't thought it possible to hate Clu any more than she already did.

 

 _Focus on the now._ She reminded herself. _Focus on him._

 

His head in her lap, shoulders propped up on her legs, she trailed the cloth over his wounds. His circuit lines were still faint, but they were at least a clear blue-white now. Just when she had begun to think that he was completely offline, she felt him stir.

 

"Shhh. You're safe. Tron, you're safe," she assured him, dropping the cloth and assuring him with her words and touch. "It's just me – it's Yori. I won't hurt you. I _can't_ hurt you..."

 

He probably didn't have enough power to process her words, but she kept speaking anyway. She spoke about the Tower, about how she had spent so long alone that she thought she would blue-screen from the isolation. As her words poured out, so did all the things she forced herself not to feel for so long.

 

"I thought you were gone. I've tried so hard to carry on the fight. I've tried to rebuild, and I've tried..." Her voice caught. "If I'd known, then I would have done _anything_ to bring you back."

 

Her eyes were blurry now, stinging with tears. It was one of those mysteries that even baffled Flynn – how Programs could cry. She blinked, and they started falling uncontrollably. She grasped his limp hand in hers and hoped, willing him back to life.

 

He gave off a strange whirring as he breathed, but when her hand clasped around his, the whirring faded out and his lines flickered white.

 

"That's it," she said. "Keep breathing."

 

Yori leaned forward and lightly kissed his broad forehead, traced his square jaw with her fingers, willing him not to fade.

 

"I never stopped loving you. I kept fighting when you couldn't, but...but I've been alone so long. I can't keep fighting alone." Tears struck their joined hands, wetting the space between their fingers. The thin filigree of circuitry on his fingers began to glow a steady, bright white.

 

If he heard her, he gave no sign. His lines were stronger, but the rest of him seemed to be fading. Yori felt a chill down to her source code. She had begged him to stay, but it wasn't enough.

 

Whispering an incantation that she had turned her back on so long ago, she looked up to the digital sky and invoked a power she had long dismissed as uncaring, ignorant, or both.

 

"All that is visible," she whispered. "Must grow and extend itself into the realm of the invisible..."

 

She had no idea if the Users could hear her or not. She just knew that, for both their sakes, she had to try.

 

Throwing back her head, she gasped and pulled energy from the deepest part of herself, pouring it into him. It was a desperate move on the part of a Program, but if it de-rezzed them both, so be it.

  
  



	5. Reunion

 

After a few more nanoseconds, the hands moved again, lightly moving over his biceps, his forearms. One of them grasped his hand and pulled upward. He could feel warmth and smoothness. Something warm and wet, like little drops from a power pool, flowed in the cracks between his fingers. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was strange.

 

 _Tears?_ His glitchy memory provided the term.

 

Clu did not weep. That was weakness and Clu was strength...

 

No. Clu was not strong. Clu was brutal, but brutality was not strength. As Rinzler, he was so glitched, he didn't know the difference.

 

The hands had taken his own and enfolded it, a slight trickle of power flowing into him through it, and he gasped at the unfamiliar feeling. Something warm and soft brushed his forehead, leaving another kind of touch.

 

Clu would never do this, and he was so tired. _Do you know who I am? What I've done? Let me go. Let me de-rez..._

 

His audio processors started functioning. Though distorted, he was able to make out a few words of a soft, feminine voice. "Been alone so long.."

 

 _So have I..._ Physically, he was rarely alone. Clu would never allow it. But _Tron_ had been trapped within the Rinzler shell, unable to act, unable to speak for himself and with no contact that wasn't pain.

 

The power that had been trickling into him seemed to be returning his functions. He knew that voice. Her name fought its way into its memory like he had fought the currents of the dead sea – _Yori!_ But how? Her I/O Tower was destroyed. How could she have survived so long and not been found?

 

As badly as he wanted to de-rez, he didn't want to lose the feeling of her hands, didn't want to lose the sound of her voice. It had been so long since he had the capacity to want something at all...

 

 _It's a trick,_ part of him warned. _Clu would have killed or re-purposed her._

 

The dampness trickled past their hands and down his arm, touching pathways that had been shut off and neglected as inefficient.

 

"All that is visible..." Tron heard her whisper, starting the prayer he had not heard in ages, and he ached to say it with her, wish them both to a time when the system had hope and the Users were infallible.

 

_De-rez is safer. De-rez means you will never be used again. De-rez means you can't hurt her or anyone else._

 

A surge of power jolted through his hand, and he could almost feel her desperate attempt to pour life into him, a last-ditch effort, he vaguely recalled. He had seen it so many times – Program and Iso – trying past hope to pull a loved one from the brink. Sometimes, it would drag them both under, as they joined each other in the void.

 

While all the memories didn't rush back, the emotions did – the purpose, the light, and laughter. Oh, how he grieved for her when Rinzler was sent to pick through the remains of her I/O Tower. When the system had gone dark, he had hoped she was de-rezzed so that she didn't have to know...

 

_The Program she loved has been destroyed. Spare her further pain. Let go._

 

"Come back to me," she begged, one hand grasping tight while the other cupped his face.

 

The universe narrowed to the hand clasping his own. As Clu's drone, there was no decision to be made. Now there was one, irreversible, decision gate. He could let go one last time, accepting the brutal peace and certainty of oblivion, with the distinct possibility that he'd pull her down with him. Or he could make the riskier decision to live with all he was and all he might become.

 

_I **choose** to keep fighting. If there are no Users, then I will fight for **her**._

 

Want turned to will. Will turned to purpose. He willed his hand to close and complete the circuit. Surrendering in a way he hadn't done since his re-purpose, he let that energy and love flow into him. Tron gasped as his circuitry burned again, this time with indescribable compassion and longing. Sucking in a deep breath, his eyes opened and he saw her face for the first time in a thousand cycles.

 

Her wide, blue eyes were darker with sadness, her face leaner and careworn from whatever ordeals she must have gone through to survive. Her blonde hair was pulled into a thick, messy braid, and her gridsuit glowed with those beautiful indigo lines, including the signature mark of a triangle at the base of her throat.

 

The effort of transferring power spent her, and she collapsed. For a terrifying few nanoseconds, he dreaded she had given up her own life for his. He sighed with relief as she stirred and adjusted her position to lie next to him.

 

He touched her face. "Brought me back?" Speaking was difficult, taking much more processor resources than it should have. His voice was stilted and had Rinzler's tinny quality. Ah, but being able to say his _own_ words...

 

She nodded, her eyes not leaving his. The circuits on their shells were almost to the point of contact "We're in my Tower, what's left of it. We're safe."

 

The next question was much harder to ask. "You know?"

 

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded again.

 

"Why?"

 

Yori's smile was sad, but so very _her_. "I couldn't let you go." Her lithe body began to shake, and her voice cracked anew. "I couldn't..."

 

Words being difficult and imprecise, Tron settled for wrapping his arms around her a little tighter, stroking her back, savoring the small joy of a gentle touch. He needed this, needed her for so long...The contact alone was enough to break something in him, and he found his eyes stinging as he wept silently - for all the lives lost, for all the cycles lost, for the pain, for relief, and for gratitude.

 

"There is a lot that can't be fixed," she warned, murmuring into his shoulder. "It won't be perfect."

 

" _Never_ perfect," he whispered into her hair. " _Never_."

 

On a flawed and damaged Grid, the Creator and the Monster have been destroyed, with the Programs left to rebuild the world for themselves. The ruins of an I/O Tower keeps vigil on the edge of a poisoned sea. Inside are two broken Programs who have known too little peace. Eventually, they will have to face the task of salvaging what they can of their world and themselves.

 

For now, they hold each other as they enter sleep mode, and it is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This was another of the Kink Meme prompts, and another case of importing my older stuff to Ao3. The title of this piece and some of the inspiration behind it came from the Journey song "What I Needed" (it's one of the Pineda-era tracks). 
> 
> Anyone willing to use elements for this story (or any story of mine) for further fanfic or fan art is welcome to do so, as long as you give credit and let me know so I can read/see it!


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